SUCCESSES AND FAILURES IN FRUIT GROWING. 



fruit grown in this neighborhood, large 

 and small, with the average degree of 

 success. My apple orchard contains 

 about 40 trees 25 years old, half dwarfs, 

 all of them branching within 4 to 5 feel 

 off the ground. I was once told by a 

 prominent fruit grower of the Niagara 

 peninsula, that the Gravenstein was too 

 tender a tree to succeed as far north as 

 Owen Sound. My experience of them 

 leads me to differ with him in this view, 

 I regard it as amongst the hardiest. I 

 have 4 of them in my collection, the 

 rest being make up of Spys, Baldwins, 

 Spitzenbergs, Greenings, Canada Red, 

 Maiden's Blush, Talman Sweets, Snows 

 and Astracans. My Gravensteins are 

 the largest, finest and most symmetrically 

 formed of any trees in the orchard. 

 Perfectly hardy, not a twig of them has 

 ever shown the effect of frost, while I 

 have had Greenings killed outright by it. 

 I went out this morning and meas- 



ured the relative sizes of the trunks of 

 several kinds of trees, the measurement 

 was made in all cases 2 feet from the 

 ground : here is the average result : 

 Gravensteins, 52 in. in circumference 

 Spys, 43 



Talmans, 36 



Spitzenbergs, 41 

 Greenings, 47 

 Maiden's B., 42 

 Astracan, 42 



Canada Reds, 44 

 Baldwins, 47 

 The Gravensteins more than hold their 

 own in the size and symmetry of 

 branches and head, the fruit is unsur- 

 passed in size, form and flavor, by any 

 fall apple grown. By the way, the 

 Ontario I got from the Fruit Growers' 

 Association some 12 or 14 years ago has 

 not proved thrifty with me. It fruits 

 well and the apples are clean skinned 

 and uniform in size. But the tree itself 



Fio. 1570. View dn the (^rounds of Mr. McKnioht. 

 133 



